Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It is published by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York, P.O. Box 20587, Tompkins Square Station, New York, NY 10009, weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com.

ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com

*1. Haiti: Anti-UN Protest Marks Anniversary of Cholera Outbreak
Haitian activists marched in Port-au-Prince on Oct. 19 to demand the immediate withdrawal of the thousands of foreign soldiers and police agents in the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH); they also called for the United Nations to pay compensation for the country’s current cholera epidemic. The organizers chose Oct. 19 for the protest to mark one year since the outbreak started, apparently because of poor sanitary conditions among Nepalese troops at a MINUSTAH base near Mirebalais in the Central Plateau.

The disease, unknown in Haiti for at least a half century, has sickened hundreds of thousands of Haitians in the past year and has killed 6,559, according to government figures. The international health organization Doctors Without Borders (known by its initials in French, MSF) estimated that 75-80% of cholera cases reported in the world so far in 2011 have been in Haiti. The United Nations continues to deny responsibility despite overwhelming scientific evidence that the disease came from its troops [see Update #1094].

“MINUSTAH must leave,” the protesters chanted as they marched towards the capital’s main cemetery, where they burned a small coffin representing the mission. More than 100 people took part, according to the on-line Haitian news service AlterPresse; the leftist group Batay Ouvriye, which participated, estimated the crowd at 400. This was the third sizeable demonstration against MINUSTAH in the past two months; protests have increased since evidence became public that Uruguayan troops had sexually abused Haitian youths in the southern coastal town of Port-Salut [see Update #1095]. (AlterPresse 10/20/11, ___, 10/21/11)

The United Nations Security Council voted unanimously on Oct. 15 to extend MINUSTAH’s mandate for another year; the force, led by Brazilian officers, has been occupying Haiti since June 2004. The 15 nations on the council voted to reduce the mission by some 2,750, leaving 7,340 soldiers and 3,241 police agents, about the same number as before a January 2010 earthquake devastated much of southern Haiti. The Security Council also called for Secretary General Ban Ki-moon “to continue to take the necessary measures to ensure full compliance of all...personnel with the United Nations zero-tolerance policy on sexual exploitation and abuse.” (AFP 10/15/11 via Montreal Gazette)

*2. Chile: Student Strikers Occupy Congressional Budget Meeting
About 50 Chilean students and their supporters took over a congressional budget subcommittee’s meeting in Santiago on Oct. 20 to demand that the government hold a binding plebiscite on their demands. A massive student movement has paralyzed universities and secondary schools for nearly six months around calls for reversing the privatization and decentralization of the education system that started during the 1973-1990 dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. Various polls show about 80% of the population supporting the students’ demands, which won some 87% of the more than one million votes case in a nonbinding grassroots plebiscite students and teachers held Oct. 7-9 [see Update #1100].

Bursting into a meeting attended by Education Minister Felipe Bulnes and some university rectors along with senators and deputies, the protesters unfurled a banner reading “Plebiscite now” and drove Bulnes from the room. The activists remained for eight hours, live-streaming the occupation on the internet and calling for supporters to gather at the building. Senate president Guido Girardi, a member of the opposition to the government of rightwing president Sebastián Piñera, promised not to bring in the police to remove the demonstrators, as had happened to protesters earlier in the day at a session of the Chamber of Deputies in the Congress building in the city of Valparaíso.

The protesters ended the occupation in the evening after a group of senators and deputies agreed to the protesters’ demand that they introduce a constitutional amendment to allow an official plebiscite on education. The current Constitution, ratified in 1980 under the Pinochet government, limits plebiscites to special cases, such as clashes between the executive and legislative branches. In a sign of the students’ distrust of politicians, the occupiers required the legislators to sign a written agreement.

The takeover of the budget meeting followed two days of student mobilizations. The first day, Oct. 18, brought burning barricades to the streets of Santiago and an incident in which a bus was set on fire and the driver was injured. The police reported 61 arrests, but President Piñera’s spokesperson, Andrés Chadwick, insisted that the country was “in absolute normality” and that “there is no strike.” Tens of thousands of protesters marched in a national mobilization on the second day, Oct. 19. The media estimated the crowd in Santiago at 60,000, while the police gave the number as 25,000. The organizers—the Teachers Association of Chile and the Chilean Student Confederation (CONFECH)—said 300,000 people had participated nationwide. The police reported 263 arrests.

“The struggle we’re in isn’t easy,” student leader Camila Vallejo Dowling said. “The government has closed the door on us, it doesn’t want to listen, it isn’t capable of seeing the situation Chile is living through: an historic moment for making structural changes in education.” She added that the struggle might have to go on past this year. (InfoBAE (Argentina) 10/20/11 from Emol.com (Chile) and La Tercera (Chile); TeleSUR 10/20/11 via YouTube; La Jornada (Mexico) 10/19/11, 10/20/11 from correspondent and unidentified wire services)

*3. Colombia: Education Protests Shut Down 32 Universities
On Oct. 12 Colombian university students proceeded with plans announced in September to carry out an open-ended strike against proposed changes to the education system that they say will lead to privatization. A total of 32 public universities have gone on strike, according to the Broad National Student Panel (MANE), a national coordinating group, which has called for weekly demonstrations in support of the strike, including a special national mobilization at all public universities on Oct. 26.

The students say they will stay on strike until the government withdraws a proposal for amendments to Law 30, which has governed education since 1992, and agrees to talks around the student movement’s demands. The strikers are also planning discussions with professors and university workers “so that we can jointly construct the model of the university that we want,” according to Sergio Fernández, a spokesperson for the Colombian Student Organization (OCE). Fernández said a gathering in Bogotá on Nov. 12-13 will bring together students, professors, workers and others “to construct a different proposal for higher education.” (El Universal (Cartagena) 10/17/11; Notimex 10/22/11 via Diario de Yucatán (Mexico))

A medical student, Yan Farid Cheng Lugo, was killed by a homemade explosive device and 10 others were wounded in Cali, in the western department of Valle del Cauca, during the nationwide demonstrations that marked the first day of the strike on Oct. 12. MANE charged that the student’s death was not an accident, as the police claim. In MANE’s account, a group of unidentified people hurled the device from a bridge as some 15,000 students marched in the local protest. “We have reported and verified on repeated occasions that government agents infiltrate our actions in order to legitimize repression and the murder of students,” MANE wrote, “and for this reason we demand that the government clarify its participation in these actions that have put the student movement in mourning today.” (Prensa Latina 10/13/11)

In other news, Colombian authorities arrested US Navy gunner’s mate Lemar Deion Burton on Oct. 12 as he attempted to leave the country at Bogotá’s El Dorado airport; they charge that he was carrying about five kilograms of high-grade cocaine. The US Navy said Burton was based with the Navy Munitions Command at Sigonella Naval Air Station in Sicily, Italy, and was visiting Colombia on personal leave. Burton is not part of the US military mission in Colombia, according to the US embassy, so he is not covered by the immunity agreement that protects mission members from prosecution in Colombian courts. (ABC News blog 10/19/11)

*4. Honduras: Human Rights Center Created for Aguán Valley
Honduran and international human rights and grassroots organizations announced on Oct. 21 that they were forming a center to monitor and prevent rights violations in northern Honduras’ Lower Aguán Valley, where dozens of people have been killed over the past two years in land conflicts [see Update #1096]. The Human Rights Monitoring Center for the Aguán is scheduled to open on Nov. 11; it will be based in the city of Tocoa, Colón department.

According to Wilfredo Paz Zúniga, the center’s spokesperson and also the local coordinator for the National Popular Resistance Front (FNRP) coalition, the center’s functions will include stationing observers at demonstrations, land occupations and highway blockades to avert excessive use of force by police agents; protecting people whose lives are threatened; assisting victims of violence or repression; taking preventive measures; reporting human rights violations; and collecting information for legal action against rights violators.

In the area’s most recent violence, campesino Segundo Mendoza Ramos was killed on Oct. 15 and two other campesinos were wounded by gunfire the next day, according to the Honduras office of the European organization FoodFirst Information and Action Network (FIAN). The incidents were reportedly connected to efforts by private security guards for a major landowner, Miguel Facussé Barjum, to end a land occupation by members of a campesino group, the Campesino Movement of National Reclamation (MCRN). (Adital (Brazil) 10/21/11)

ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com

*1. Latin America: Thousands of Indignados Join the “Occupy” Protests
Joining others in more than 900 cities around the world, Latin American activists protested on Oct. 15 to demonstrate their discontent with the global economic system. The demonstrations got a significant boost from Occupy Wall Street, a US movement that started with an action in New York on Sept. 17, but the Latin American protests also referenced the Real Democracy Now movement that developed in Spain last spring; the Spanish protests were inspired in turn by protests in Tunisia and Egypt at the beginning of the year. In Spanish-speaking countries the movement is widely known as “15-M,” from May 15, the day when protests started in Madrid. Like the Spanish protesters, Latin American participants call themselves los indignados and las indignadas—“the angry ones,” or “the indignant ones.”

Thousands of Chileans marked the global day of action by marching with music and dancing from the University of Chile campus in central Santiago along the Alameda avenue to the O’Higgins Park. They called for reform of the political system and for a constituent assembly to write a new constitution to replace the current document, which was created under the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990). The protesters also backed the demands of student strikers for a free public education system and expressed opposition to the HidroAysén project, a plan to build a complex of five dams that environmentalists say would threaten fjords and valleys in the Patagonia region [see Updates #1081, 1100]. Organizers estimated that 5,000 people participated; the police didn’t give an estimate. Similar protests were scheduled for other cities, including Arica, Iquique, Coquimbo, La Serena and Valparaíso. (Radio Universidad de Chile 10/15/11; Observador Global (Argentina) 10/15/11; Adital (Brazil) 10/14/11)

More than 1,000 Argentines, many wearing masks or costumes, marched on Oct. 15 from the Plaza del Congreso de la Nación in central Buenos Aires to the Plaza de Mayo. The marchers included Juan Marino, the leader of the Revolutionary Piquetero Tendency (TPR), part of a movement of the unemployed that developed in response to the neoliberal policies of former president Carlos Saúl Menem (1989-1999) and the financial crisis of 2001. “It can’t go on like this,” said another marcher, Bernardo Molina. “The rich created the crisis, and we, the poor, always end up paying.” Argentines also demonstrated in La Plata, Córdoba, Mar del Plata, Rosario, Mendoza, Tucumán, Jujuy and other cities. (People’s Daily (China) 10/16/11)

In Brazil, some 200 people, mostly youths, gathered under a heavy rain at Sao Paulo’s Museo de Arte on Paulista Avenue in the banking and commercial district, while others met in the Largo de Sao Bento, a colonial building in the center of the city. Some participants were from political parties, but one group of youths carried a sign saying they rejected parties. There were also protests in Rio de Janeiro and other cities. (ANSA 10/15/11)

About 500 Peruvians marked the global day of action with a gathering at the Plaza San Martín in the center of Lima. Slogans on their signs included: “Wake up,” “Raise your voice, demand change,” and “The earth and the water belong to the people, not to the businesses.” The mobilization was “peaceful, apolitical and nonpartisan,” Luis Álvarez, from the Take the Plaza collective, which had called the protest, told Radio Programas del Perú (RPP). (EFE 10/15/11 via Qué.es (Spain))

In Colombia about 70 indignados and indignadas met at Bogotá’s National Park to call for a regeneration of the democratic and economic system. The group originally planned to march to Plaza de Bolívar, in front of the presidential palace, but participants decided to stay in the park and develop the movement by holding an assembly in which they exchanged opinions on what should be the principles of the “15-O” (Oct. 15) movement. They also made signs expressing themes of the global movement, such as “Real democracy now,” mixed with references to local issues, such as “No to mining.” (EFE 10/15/11 via El Espectador (Bogotá))

Like their Colombian counterparts, the approximately 400 protesters who gathered at the Monument to the Revolution in Mexico City on Oct. 15 focused on both local and global issues, from the Mexican government’s “war on drugs” to consumerism and fraudulent banking practices. The group that called for the mobilization, the Permanent Assembly of Mexican Indignados, read a communiqué saying that “the country is hurling itself into the disaster of daily and widespread violence; into unemployment and hunger; into the violation of the most fundamental rights; into the destruction of the social fabric and the loss of human values.” “If those below get moving, those above fall down,” “Less tele and more vision,” and “If they won’t let us dream, we won’t let them sleep” were among the signs, along with “We’ve had it up to here” (Estamos hasta la madre), a slogan which has dominated Mexican demonstrations for much of this year [see Update #1079].

There were protests in 20 other Mexican cities, including a sit-in at the Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada de Jalapa plaza in the eastern state of Veracruz and at the Explanada de los Héroes in the central plaza of Monterrey in the northern state of Nuevo León. (Observador Global 10/15/11; La Jornada (Mexico) 10/16/11, ___ )

*2. Latin America: Leaders and Writers Assess Occupy Wall Street
Latin America’s protests on the Oct. 15 global day of action around the economic system were not especially large--in comparison either to the massive protests in Europe that day or to many Latin American demonstrations around the same issues over recent years. But for leaders, writers and activists in the region the day was an historic event, both because of the participation of people around the globe and because of the unusual leading role of a movement based in the US.

“We agree with some of the expressions that some movements have used around the world [in] demonstrations like the ones we see in the US and other countries,” Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff, a member of the center-left Workers Party (PT), said in an official speech in Porto Alegre on Oct. 14. She noted that she herself had taken a slogan from these movements: “No, we’re not going to pay for your crisis.” (ANSA 10/15/11)

Hugo Chávez Frías, the leftist president of Venezuela, warned US rulers that “something’s germinating” in the Occupy Wall Street movement. Rather than “trying to stop the peaceful march of Venezuela,” he said at an Oct. 15 cabinet meeting broadcast by the government’s television network, Venezolana de Televisión (VTV), US leaders should “worry instead about the indignados they have there in the heart of Wall Street. Today there were marches in half the world, in all the world. Let them worry about that.” (EFE 10/15/11 via El Nuevo Herald (Miami))

Oct. 15 “is going to be an unforgettable date for the human race,” organizers of the protests in Chile wrote on their website. “This will be the first universal gathering of citizens for a better world.” “I have great joy in my heart because for the first time in the history of the planet all of humanity is raising its voice against a dominant power which has kept us lulled to sleep and which is responsible for the current global crisis,” one of the older protesters in Colombia, Jorge Reyes, told the Spanish wire service EFE. The renowned Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano called the 15-M movement a “pure vitamin of hope” which shows that “everything can change” and “we’re not condemned to living in the most dangerous universal dictatorship, that of the masters of finance.” (Adital (Brazil) 10/14/11; EFE 10/15/11 via El Espectador (Bogotá))

An editorial in Mexico’s left-leaning daily La Jornada noted: “[T]he fact that the protests have appeared in scenarios as different from each other as the developed nations of Europe and the peripheral nations of Latin America, Asia and Africa confirms once again the destabilizing and self-destructive character of economic globalization.” The world financial centers have “succeeded in globalizing discontent and indignation.” But the paper warned that “the appearance of these spontaneous expressions of dissent…and the justified unrest of the demonstrators aren’t enough to change [the] status quo…for that it is necessary to have a massive participation of the majority sectors of the world population.” (LJ 10/16/11)

*3. Trade: US Congress Approves Colombia and Panama FTAs
Just as opposition to neoliberal economic policies was generating new protests around the world, on Oct. 12 the US Congress passed long-delayed neoliberal free trade agreements (FTAs, or TLCs in Spanish) with Colombia, South Korea and Panama. The three agreements were negotiated by the administration of former US president George W. Bush (2001-2009); the Colombia FTA was signed in 2006, and the Korea and Panama FTAs were signed in 2007. But approval by Congress was delayed because of partisan maneuvering and the unpopularity of previous agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Many Democrats and US labor leaders opposed the Colombia pact because of continuing murders of unionists in the South American country [see Update #1099].

Despite this opposition, the FTAs passed Congress with large majorities. The vote in the House of Representative was 262-167 for the Colombia agreement, 278-151 for Korea and 300-129 for Panama; the Senate voted 66-33 for the Colombia FTA, 83-15 for Korea and 77-22 for Panama. The agreements will eliminate or reduce tariffs restricting imports from the US, improve protection for what US companies consider their intellectual property rights, and give freer access for US investors. The US International Trade Commission (USTR) projects that the three FTAs will boost US national exports by about $13 billion a year, some 0.1% of the US gross domestic product (GDP). (The Jurist 10/13/11)

“More jobs will be created in both countries” through the Colombia-US FTA, Ricardo Tribín, former president of the Colombia Chamber of Commerce, told the Miami radio station WQBA after the pact was approved. “[I]n the case of Florida it was almost necessary to approve it, because of the problem of unemployment,” he said. “Now it just needs to be implemented.” (EFE 10/13/11 via WQBA) US president Barack Obama and Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos made similar claims. Obama said the pact would stimulate the stagnant US economy, while Santos promised a permanent 1% increase in Colombia’s growth rate, the creation of 250,000 new jobs and a 6% rise in exports.

But Mauricio Cabrera Galvis, a columnist for the daily Vanguardia in the northern department of Santander, wrote that the Colombian government hadn’t explained how it arrived at such high figures for job growth. The USTR only projected 7,000 new jobs for the US, with exports to Colombia growing by $1.1 billion a year and Colombia’s exports growing by much less--just $487 million. Moreover, some Colombian business people are worried that labor protection clauses in the FTA will raise wages and reduce their competitive edge, Cabrera wrote. (Vanguardia 10/16/11)

Colombian labor leaders didn’t share this concern about increased wages. The unionists, who have repeatedly demonstrated against the FTA [see Update #1075], expect that the FTA “will bring a great loss of jobs and the destruction of the agricultural sector, which isn’t prepared for the competition” with US agribusiness, in the words of Tarcisio Mora, who heads the Unitary Workers Central (CUT), Colombia’s main labor federation. (TeleSUR 10/13/11 via Adital (Brazil)) Colombian economist Mario Alejandro Valencia went further. Noting that the US Congress passed the FTA on Oct. 12, when Latin Americans commemorate the beginning of the European invasion and colonization of the region, Valencia charged that the pact “legally decrees the recolonization of Colombia, this time at the hands of the US multinationals, the most powerful that have ever existed.” (Prensa Rural (Colombia) 10/14/11)

Union leaders in Panama had the same concerns. “With this treaty Panamanian agriculture and employment will obviously be affected,” Samuel Rivera, from the National Council of Organized Workers (Conato), told the French wire service AFP. “This is a fight between a heavyweight and a flyweight… [W]ith the [government] subsidies that US products get, there is no human way our country can compete.” (AFP 10/13/11 via Estrategia y Negocios (Honduras))

We said we were having our final book giveaway last spring, but we were wrong. We found still more books as we cleared out the old Nicaragua Solidarity Network office, and then we remembered that we'd left other books at a different location. And we'd forgotten about the boxes of T-shirts, buttons and magazines.

Here are just some of the rare and exciting items that are yours for the asking:

* Books on Latin America: Rigoberta Menchu, the Sandinista Revolution and the Contra Wars, John Ross on Mexico...even a pamphlet about the Zapatistas in Czech.

* Books in Spanish: political analysis, the poetry of Ernesto Cardenal, a children's coloring book, a Spanish-Miskito phrase book...

* Books in English on all sorts of subjects: know-your-rights brochures from the Center for Constitutional Rights, a coffee table book with 100 Chinese revolutionary posters, a Russian dictionary, a biography of Alan Turing, books on construction, on how to mix cement (from the NY-Nicaragua Construction Brigade's collection)...

* Back issues of Envío (in English).

* Historic isssues of NACLA's Report on the Americas, all the way back to 1969.

* T-shirts from FMLN campaigns. Buttons from the FSLN's unsuccessful 1990 campaign. And much more.

We'd love to give you more time to come check out all these books and memorabilia, but we have to be out of the office by the end of the month. Everything really has to go this time, so come on to 339 Lafayette and take it away. For updated information, check http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/, or write us at weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com

ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com.

*1. Chile: Government Meets Students With Repression
In what appeared to be a sudden increase in repression, Chile’s militarized carabineros police used water cannons and tear gas to break up an unauthorized march by student strikers in Santiago on Oct. 6. Many protesters responded by throwing rocks and sticks at the agents. More than 130 people were arrested during the confrontations, and 25 police agents and dozens of civilians were injured. The police action came one day after student leaders and the rightwing government of President Sebastián Piñera broke off talks they had been holding on education reform.

The weekly student demonstrations in favor of reversing the country’s highly privatized education system have frequently resulted in violent clashes at the end of the route [see Update #1098], but on Oct. 6 the police moved against the marchers almost as soon as they began walking from the Plaza Italia along the central Alameda (Libertador Bernardo O'Higgins Avenue) toward the La Moneda presidential palace. Student leaders--including Camila Vallejo Dowling, president of the Federation of University of Chile Students (FECH) and a spokesperson for the Chilean Student Confederation (CONFECH)--were hit by the water and were affected by the tear gas. Two journalists were injured: CNN reporter Nicolás Oyarzún and Megavisión camera operator Jorge Rodríguez. Chilevisión reporter Luis Narváez was arrested when he asked for the identity of an agent who had beaten a Chilevisión camera operator.

In another sign that President Piñera is moving towards increased repression, on Oct. 2 the government proposed legislation with harsher penalties for people who occupy schools or public or private buildings, or who cause damage in protests. Students have occupied many universities and secondary schools during more than four months of strikes for education reform.

Student leaders accused the government of sabotaging the negotiations by refusing to consider the strikers’ demand for free public education and instead continuing to push for subsidized education for the poorest 40% of students. “We, the students and social actors, weren’t the ones who wanted to break off the discussion,” FECH president Vallejo said on Oct. 8. “It was the government itself, because they don’t have the political capacity, they don’t have the will to take into consideration the demands of the great majorities of our country.” At a meeting on Oct. 8, CONFECH decided to call for two days of strikes and protests on Oct. 18 and 19. (Prensa Latina 10/6/11; La Jornada (Mexico) 10/7/11 from correspondent; Radio Universidad de Chile 10/8/11)

As of the afternoon of Oct. 9, 1,032,803 Chileans had voted in the National Plebiscite for Education, a three-day grassroots referendum on the demands of the student strikers, organizers of the voting said. According to Jaime Gajardo, president of the Teachers Association of Chile, preliminary results showed 89% to 95% of participants supporting the demand for a free public education system administered by the national government. Organizers said 723,614 people voted at 1,711 tables set up on Oct. 7 in public spaces throughout the country, and 309,189 more voted on the internet; the tables closed down after the first two days, but internet voting was to continue through the end of Oct. 9.

Plebiscite organizers admitted that they didn’t have the ability to prevent people from using false taxpayer identification numbers (RUTs) to vote more than once, but they said they would use data base analysis to try to determine the percentage of fraudulent votes. Gajardo noted the lines at the voting tables and the festive mood among the ten thousands of voters. “Could anyone question that there was a high rate of participation?” he asked. (Radio Universidad de Chile 10/9/11)

*2. Haiti: Protesters Demand Decent Jobs and Housing
Chanting “This has to change,” some 200 Haitians marked World Day for Decent Work on Oct. 7 with a march to the National Industrial Parks Company (Sonapi), where most of Port-au-Prince’s low-wage assembly plants are located. Some of the marchers had their faces covered to keep from being identified; managers at three Sonapi plants fired a total of six officers of the newly formed Textile and Garment Workers Union (SOTA) in the last week of September [see Update #1099]. Police agents from the Departmental Unit for the Maintenance of Order (UDMO) were stationed at the industrial park to keep the marchers from accessing the plants.

The jobs at these factories, which stitch garments for export, are basically temporary and don’t offer decent pay or benefits, according to Yanick Etienne of the leftist group Batay Ouvriye (“Workers’ Struggle”). Évèle Fanfan, one of the march’s organizers, said that jobs should be a real factor in social mobility. “If a worker is employed in an assembly plant, his or her children shouldn’t have to work there in the future,” Fanfan said. (AlterPresse (Haiti) 10/7/11)

Four days earlier, on Oct. 3, the Collective of Organizations for the Defense of the Right to Housing held a rally outside the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor (MAST) to demand a government housing program to replace the tens of thousands of homes destroyed in a devastating earthquake in January 2010. Among the protesters were representatives of various camps where thousands of the homeless have been living since the quake, and delegates from the Grito de los Excluidos (“Cry of the Excluded”), an organization that sponsors mobilizations in Latin America and the Caribbean each year on Oct. 12. The delegates were from various Caribbean countries, including Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico; there were also participants from Chile, France and the US. (Radio Métropole (Haiti) 10/6/11)

On Oct. 4 the Senate voted 17 to three, with nine abstentions, to confirm President Michel Martelly’s choice of Garry Conille as prime minister; the Chamber of Deputies had already approved the nomination on Sept. 16 [see Update #1099]. In an interview with the Reuters wire service after the Senate vote, the new prime minister appeared to have the same concerns as the organizers of the Oct. 3 and Oct. 7 protests. His top priority was “jobs, jobs, jobs,” Conille said, along with getting the rebuilding process in motion. “The Haitian people have been incredibly patient,” he told Reuters. “I think we need to move faster. We need to change lives faster.... We still have about 600,000 people living under tents, we still have tons and tons of debris to be collected.”

But grassroots organizations remained skeptical about Conille, who has served as chief of staff for former US president Bill Clinton (1993-2001), the UN’s special envoy to Haiti. Conille will “defend Clinton’s interests,” not Haiti’s, Philefrant Saintnaré, a spokesperson for the Papaye Peasant Movement (MPP), told the online Haitian news service AlterPresse. “Haiti is in a phase of recolonization,” Saintnaré said; with Conille in office, the imperialist forces will be able to fulfill their dream “of monopolizing the peasants’ lands in order to set up free-trade zones [tax-exempt industrial parks] and to produce biofuels.” (Reuters 10/5/11 via AlterNet; AlterPresse 10/6/11)

*3. Puerto Rico: Governor Promises to Clean Up the Police
Rightwing Puerto Rican governor Luis Fortuño is now trying to control damage from a Sept. 8 report by the US Justice Department condemning unconstitutional conduct by the island’s police force [see World War 4 Report 9/10/11]. The report cited “continued civil rights violations,” “the failure to implement meaningful reforms,” discrimination against Dominicans, and failure to report and investigate alleged sex crimes and domestic violence. The US government’s criticisms followed repeated charges of police brutality from Puerto Rican student protesters and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) [see Update #1079].

Gov. Fortuño says that he has been working to end abuses in the department since he took office in 2009. His reforms have included appointing an independent monitor, replacing police superintendent José Figueroa Sancha, improving training programs, and instituting a detailed “use of force” policy. “Most of the problems occurred before my time,” Fortuño told the New York Times in an interview. “I accept responsibility. My mandate is to change that. But this will take time. It was years in the making, and it will take years to fix.”

But there are many questions about the impact and direction of Fortuño’s reform program. The Times notes that just this summer a police department internal affairs agent, Norman Torrens, was suddenly demoted after he reported that police in Vega Alta in the north were manipulating crimes statistics. Torrens is now suing the deparment.

One example Fortuño gave the Times of his reform efforts was his decision to get “expert” advice from the New York City Police Department after Puerto Rican police agents clubbed and pepper-sprayed student protesters, apparently without provocation, at the Capitol building on June 30, 2010 [see Update #1039]. (NYT 10/5/11) On Sept. 24 of this year, less than two weeks before the Times article appeared, New York police officers themselves were videotaped pepper-spraying youthful protesters from the Occupy Wall Street movement for no apparent reason.

*4. Mexico: “Walked” US Guns Found at Cartel Enforcer’s Home
Forty of the firearms that Mexican police seized on Apr. 30 at the home of an alleged drug trafficker in Ciudad Juárez in the northern state of Chihuahua turn out to among the 2,000 weapons that reached Mexico as a result of the US government’s bungled Operation Fast and Furious [see Update #1095]. The house, which was empty when police arrived, belonged to José Antonio Torres Marrufo, considered by US authorities a top enforcer for the Sinaloa drug cartel of Joaquín Guzmán Loera ("El Chapo"). The weapons were bought legally in Phoenix, Arizona, then taken to El Paso, Texas, and smuggled across the border to Ciudad Juárez.

Fast and Furious was an effort by the US Justice Department’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) to catch suspected gun smugglers by letting rifles “walk” after they were purchased instead of arresting the purchasers immediately. The intent was to trace the smugglers’ activities, but ATF agents lost track of some 2,000 weapons, which apparently got into Mexico. Officials assume the drug cartels received most of them and that the weapons have been used in the fighting that has led to some 40,000 deaths in the last five years. “These Fast and Furious guns were going to Sinaloans, and they are killing everyone down there,” an unidentified “US government source” told the Los Angeles Times. About 100 weapons seem to have gone through El Paso. “But that's only how many we know came through Texas,” the source said. “Hundreds more had to get through.” (LAT 10/8/11)

Meanwhile, ammunition is apparently even easier to buy and to smuggle than assault rifles. While ammunition sales are strictly regulated in Mexico, there are few limits in the US. The 1968 Federal Gun Control Act required ammunition sellers to be licensed and to keep a log of all ammunition sales, but these restrictions were eliminated in the 1986 Firearms Owners Protection Act. Many states regulate ammunition sales to some extent, but a few, including Arizona, have virtually no regulation. Federal agents seized 95,416 rounds of ammunition at Arizona's six ports of entry along the Mexican border in the last fiscal year. The ammunition in Mexico is “all coming from the US," Jose Wall, a senior ATF trafficking agent in Phoenix, told USA Today. “I can't remember where I've seen ammunition from anywhere but the US.” (USA Today 10/9/11)

ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. It is archived at http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com

*1. Haiti: Garment Bosses Fight New Unionization Drive
The management of two Port-au-Prince apparel factories owned by wealthy and powerful Haitians--Gerald Apaid and former presidential candidate Charles Henri Baker--fired a total of five officers of a new garment workers union between Sept. 23 and Sept. 25, a little more than a week after the union announced its formation.

Johny Deshommes, a spokesperson for the Textile and Garment Workers Union (SOTA), lost his job at Apaid’s Genesis S.A. factory on Sept. 23 when he asked to be allowed to go home because of a fever. Three other members of SOTA’s executive committee, Brevil Claude, Wilner Eliacint and Cénatus Vilaire, were fired on Sept. 25 when they tried to meet with the human resources director to discuss Deshommes’ firing; Genesis management brought in two police agents to intimidate and threaten the unionists before they were allowed to leave. SOTA’s secretary, Mitial Rubin, was fired from Baker’s One World Apparel after he had leafleted workers outside the factory.

A third apparel company in the capital, Richard Coles’ Multiwear SA, fired union member Hilaire Jean-François on Sept. 30, and there are reports of harassment of other unionists.

The factories, located in the National Industrial Parks Company (Sonapi) facility near the Port-au-Prince airport, are tax-exempt assembly plants producing largely for export (known in Spanish as maquiladoras). None of the Sonapi factories are unionized, and unions have been kept out of most Haitian assembly plants, although the leftist group Batay Ouvriye (“Workers’ Struggle”) succeeded in organizing a union in 2004 at the assembly plants in Ouanaminthe at the Dominican border in the Northeast department [see Update #829].

SOTA’s formation was announced on Sept. 15 at a press conference in Port-au-Prince with representatives of Batay Ouvriye. Representatives of Haitian and international organizations also attended, including Camille Charlmers, executive secretary of the Haitian Platform Advocating an Alternative Development (PAPDA), and Víctor Báez Mosqueira, secretary general of the Trade Union Confederation of the Americas (CSA-TUCA). The union has registered with Haiti’s Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor (MAST).

The firings have received some international attention: the General Union of Guadeloupe Workers (UGTG), which led a 44-day general strike in the French Caribbean colony of Guadaloupe in 2008 [see Update #988], denounced the companies’ actions and declared its solidarity with SOTA. Batay Ouvriye has announced plans to file complaints with the Haitian authorities about the situation, and the group is asking solidarity activists to email the factory owners and the Association des Industries d’Haïti (ADIH, a factory owners’ group) demanding the reinstatement of the unionists and full collective bargaining rights for assembly plant workers. The emails can be sent to Mr. Gerard Apaid/Genesis at gapaid33166@yahoo.com; Mr. Charles Henry Baker/One World Apparel at chbaker@pbapparel.com; Mr. Richard Coles/Multiwear at rcoles@multitex.com; and ADIH at administration@adih.ht, with copies to Batay Ouvriye at batay@batayouvriye.org. (AlterPresse (Haiti) 9/16/11, 9/29/11, 9/30/11; Batay Ouvriye press release 9/27/11 via anarkismo.net 9/28/11, press release 10/1/11 via email)

In other labor news, the Association of Elementary School Teachers of Port-au-Prince Municipal Schools (ASIEMP) threatened to start an open-ended strike in the capital on Oct. 4, the day after schools open for the fall, to demand five months’ back pay the union says is owed to a group of 800 teachers. The week before, on Sept. 28, some 30 members and supporters of the National Union of Haitian Teachers (UNNOH) marched in Port-au-Prince to demand that President Michel Martelly (“Sweet Micky”) promulgate a law regulating school fees. Parliament passed the law in 2009, but it has never gone into effect. The marchers also demanded reinstatement of laid-off teachers and restoration of a bonus; they expressed doubts that the president really intends to carry out a plan he has announced for free public education. (AlterPresse 9/29/11, ___; Haïti Libre (Haiti) 9/30/11)

*2. Haiti: Martelly Backs Clinton Aide, Army Restoration
The Haitian Senate was scheduled to start discussions on President Michel Martelly’s latest nominee for prime minister, Garry Conille, on Oct. 3. The Chamber of Deputies voted 89-0 on Sept. 16 in favor of the nomination after Parliament rejected Martelly’s two previous choices. The government has been administered by acting prime minister Jean-Max Bellerive, a holdover from the previous administration, ever since Martelly took office in May.

Garry Conille is the resident coordinator for the United Nations Development Program in Niger and has been an assistant to former US president Bill Clinton (1993-2001), the United Nations’ special envoy for Haiti and the co-president of the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC, or CIRH in French and Spanish). The choice of Conille has been controversial because of his long association with Clinton, who was already being referred to in political circles as the de facto “governor of Haiti” [see Update #1096]. According to the Miami Herald, Conille insists “that he’s not the international community’s candidate.” (MH 9/17/11 from correspondent; Haïti Libre (Haiti) 10/1/11)

In another controversial move, Martelly is apparently planning to reinstitute the Armed Forces of Haiti (FAd’H), which was abolished on Jan. 6, 1995 by then-president Jean-Bertrand Aristide (1991-1996, 2001-2004). A document entitled “Haiti Security: All the Details on the Project for the New National Force,” not yet released officially, describes a plan for an initial force with 3,500 members; recruitment would begin in October or November.

Grassroots movements strongly oppose the plan. Osnel Jean-Baptiste, spokesperson for Tèt Kole Ti Peyizan Ayisyen ("Small Haitian Peasants Unity"), said that if the army returns, it “will only work for one part” of the population and that the wounds from the old military’s acts of repression have not yet healed. Yanick Étienne, a spokesperson for the leftist group Batay Ouvriye (“Workers’ Struggle”), called the proposed army “one more force against the people. This won’t be an army that will defend the nation’s interests.” (AlterPresse (Haiti) 9/29/11)

*3. Honduras: Police Find Shipment of Arms From US
Honduran police spokesperson Julián Hernández announced on Sept. 30 that agents had discovered an illegal shipment of arms from the US in Puerto Cortés, the country’s main port, in the northern department of Cortés. The arms, hidden in several boxes containing garments, included five rifles, an Uzi submachine gun, a pistol and a supply of ammunition. It was sent via Guatemala from a “Héctor Figueroa” in the US to a “Concepción Duarte,” who reportedly lives in San Francisco de la Paz in eastern Honduras.

The authorities reported discovering another shipment of arms from the US on Sept. 8; this one was sent to a man identified as “Pablo Flores,” who was said to have died in a confrontation with the police in northern Honduras. (EFE 9/30/11 via Terra (Spain))

Northern Honduras, especially the Lower Aguán Valley area, has been the site of violent struggles over land over the past two years and has also seen increased activity by drug smugglers and other criminals [see Updates #1094, 1096]. The government has responded to growing violence by militarizing the region, but local grassroots organizations say that while the military presence has done little to end killings and other criminal activity, it has increased the repression of campesino groups. On Sept. 30, the same day the latest arms discovery was announced, Honduran and international organizations opened a four-day conference in Tocoa, Colón department, entitled “Gathering Against Militarization, Occupation and Repression in Honduras: Militant Solidarity With the Lower Aguán.” (Vos el Soberano (Honduras) 9/30/11; Adital (Brazil) 9/30/11)

*4. Trade: US Unions Fight Colombia and Panama FTAs
Richard Trumka, president of the US’s AFL-CIO labor federation, sent a letter to US president Barack Obama on Sept. 26 opposing any immediate action on a proposed free trade agreement (FTA, TLC in Spanish) with Colombia. Obama is expected to send the Colombia-US FTA for approval to Congress in the next few weeks. Trumka, whose federation is the largest union group in the US, said a labor action plan that Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos agreed to in April has proven ineffective. According to the AFL-CIO, Colombian workers are still forced to sign pactos colectivos--salary and benefit agreements imposed by employers--or to join cooperatives that act as company unions. So far this year, 22 unionists have been murdered in Colombia, including 15 since the labor action plan went into effect, Trumka wrote. (AFL-CIO Now blog 9/26/11)

The AFL-CIO has initiated a “call-in day” on Oct. 4 against the Colombia-US FTA and against similar deals with South Korea and Panama. The federation says that the Korea FTA, “is the biggest trade deal since NAFTA” (the North American Free Trade Agreement of 1993) and “would displace an estimated 159,000 net US jobs, mostly in manufacturing.” The AFL-CIO described Panama as a “tax haven for money launderers and tax dodgers” with “a history of failing to protect workers’ rights.” Activists can call US representatives at 800-718-1008 to oppose the agreements. (Alliance for Global Justice 9/28/11)

About the Update

ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a progressive perspective. It was published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York from 1990 to 2015. It continues to carry occasional postings. For a subscription, write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com.
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